


in these dreams, it's always you

by electrumqueen



Series: the days were bright red [2]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Canon-Typical themes, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 16:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6158938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electrumqueen/pseuds/electrumqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Look at you, smitten kitten,” Victoria says, beaming at Senna. “You’re practically purring every time he so much as looks at you. Has he dangled a ball of string for you, yet?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	in these dreams, it's always you

**Author's Note:**

> i love daemons and i love victoria and after "smitten kitten" the idea of robert's large cat daemon rolling around being obnoxiously in love would not leave my head. thanks to j for the hand holding and lapslock catches! ur the best :*

-

It’s snowing, and they’re fixing Vic’s van.

Senna hates the snow: it’s cold on the pads of her feet, the chill always getting through to the heart of her. One year Robert got her gloves, but she pulled them off with her teeth and then hissed at him while methodically shredding them to bits, so that’s never been repeated.

There’s snow in Robert’s hair, and in Senna’s fur. When he blinks it catches on his eyelashes. It’s sticking to his cheek so he swipes at it: god, it’s awful, this combination of cold and wet. Senna is a  _ cat. _ A cat from where it’s warm, even.

“Too much like hard graft for you?” Aaron teases, looking warm and well-bundled in his glaring jacket. Beatrice pokes her head out from under the hood of the van to laugh at both of them.

“Oh, shut up,” Robert says. “I can do this, all right? Let me prove it.”

Aaron blinks at him. “If you want,” he says, holding out an arm so Beatrice can run up it and into his jacket, which he unzips so she can fit inside, nose poking out from his collar, and one paw bracing herself so she can look at him. “Show us what you’ve got, then, Mr Mechanic.”

Robert rolls his eyes and bends over the engine.

He can feel Senna pacing, miserable, around the van. She’s cold, all the way through, but there’s a moment and then a little burst of heat in his stomach and when he looks over Aaron’s got her, kneeling next to her on the snowy ground to scratch her behind the ears while her tail curls through the air like a question mark.

“Hurry up,” Aaron says, looking sideways at him with a hint of a smile in the corners of his mouth. “We haven’t got all day, Vic’s got places to be.”

Robert flips him off. “I’ve got it,” he says. “Or I will, if you can shut your gob long enough for me to get an actual look.”

Aaron laughs, raucous and loud; Senna sprawls onto her back, and he rubs her belly. More like a housecat than a panther, his daemon.

It’s nice. Robert likes it.

They have a lot to make up for, him and Senna. It’s - really something, that Aaron’s letting them try.

He breathes out, watching his breath crystallize in the cold air, and bends back over the engine. He’s got this. This, he can fix.

-

Aaron leaned towards him. His mouth was red and he looked hopeful, as he had not looked in what felt like years. Robert had done this.

He had done so much to Aaron: ripped him down, torn him apart. But this - this was something. He had helped with this, at least.

Aaron would have been all right without him - Aaron was tough and brave and somehow, still, despite all of it, breathtakingly kind - but Robert had been allowed to help, and that was good. Because Aaron shouldn’t have had to do anything alone, not ever. Not while Robert was alive.

Now Beatrice was sitting on the park bench between them and her nose was near his thigh - not touching, but not far, either. She was lovely, Aaron’s daemon. Quick and sleek and breathtakingly efficient, when she wanted to be. Sometimes Robert found himself leaning against a car in the scrapyard, just to watch her; he and Senna, with a cup of tea, watching Beatrice systematically reduce a car to parts.

He let his palm fall open. Not touching, but: an option. If she wanted.

There was a sound: a little girl and her daemon, a jackdaw for the moment, but as they watched he shifted, became a crow and then a curious, sniffing ermine. They needed bus fare, which was bullshit.

Senna pricked up her ears, eyes sharp: fixed them with a careful stare but stayed very still, muscles tensed and coiled, fresh with anticipation. Not a threat, probably, but it was Aaron: better safe than sorry. People had been  _ sorry _ with Aaron far too often, and it wasn’t about to happen on their watch.

Aaron gave the girl coins; Beatrice nosed at the ermine, and they blinked at each other, and then the girl left.

“Soft touch,” Robert said, but fondly. Senna leaned across him and nosed at Aaron’s wrist; absently he stroked the side of her jaw, scratching idly underneath.

Beatrice sat up on her haunches and cocked her head to one side. “They were little.”

She was talking to him more than she’d used to. She didn’t trust him, exactly, but he’d proven that he wouldn’t hurt them, and sometimes when things got a bit rough she’d press herself against his forearm, or his chest, and let him pick her up to hold.

Aaron shrugged. Leaned in again, a promise, a question.

Robert had dreamed about kissing him. He had tried not to, but that was a joke. It was  _ Aaron, _ Aaron with his broad shoulders and his hidden smiles and the way he trusted Robert, sometimes, when he was half awake and all of the neurons weren’t firing yet.

Senna scrambled off Robert’s lap, down, onto the concrete. Beatrice followed her, a quick slide of paw onto grass, but Senna turned away.

“We can’t,” Robert said. It hurt, to say it.

“Why?” Aaron had frozen, and so had Beatrice, and it was like that day on Wylie’s Farm when Senna had been predator and Beatrice had been prey and everything had gone to  _ shit. _ Aaron shook his head; a spark. “Because you don’t see me like that anymore.”

“You’re not in a good place.”  _ You let me hold your daemon,  _ Robert thought.  _ And you don’t even like me very much. _

“Forget it,” Aaron said, and he stood and picked up his daemon and left. The slump of his shoulders was a steady downward line.

“Ouch,” Senna said, unwinding her long body and clambering up onto the bench beside him. She tucked her face into Robert’s chest and he wrapped his arms around her and they exhaled lowly, the both of them, and didn’t move.

-

Senna is washing Beatrice again.

“ _ Again, _ ” Aaron moans. “Was she not clean enough the first five times?”

“Shut up,” Senna says, with a mouthful of Beatrice’s fur, paw on the back of her neck. “I’m busy.”

Beatrice snuffles, a warm little sound, and rolls over onto her back for easier access.

They’re in the Woolie, with Vic and Adam. Samson is sitting on Vic’s shoulder and Adam’s little terrier is napping at his feet, shifting occasionally to yawn with a mouth that takes up half her face.

Aaron sips at his pint and stoically pretends to ignore their daemons; but Robert’s got a warm feeling in his belly so he knows Aaron must, too.

“Cute,” Victoria says, leaning over to grin at Robert, right in his face. Like they’ve got a secret they’re sharing, just the two of them. God, sisters.

He does love her. It’s easy to forget how much he loves her, with the mess that’s everything else, but it’s  _ Vic. _ The constant, the centre of a tumultuous universe. His baby sister.

Even if she’s got a fucking lump of a husband.

Robert supposes that Aaron and Beatrice picked Adam, too, so he can’t be all bad. But he and Senna have spent many hours late at night trying to figure out his redeeming features and they really can’t put them together.

Behind the bar, Chas raises an eyebrow. Her wolf’s curled up under a barstool, but he cracks an eye open when he sees Robert looking.

They’re disappointed, Chas and Baruch, in this thing with the boy that Robert’s bribed to have Aaron’s back. Robert can’t bring himself to care.

Aaron’s not smiled like this in a long time, and this, right now - it’s down to something Robert and Senna did. Sure, not the most ethical choice, but it’s  _ Aaron. _

Beatrice chirrups, a contented little noise; Senna tilts her head and yawns, at Aaron, at Robert.

It feels good. It feels like home.

-

Cain’s daemon was named Mihal. She was big, just a hand-width lower in the shoulder than Senna, and the twin to Chas’ Baruch: dark grey where he was pitch black, but they had the same features, and the same eyes.

She wasn’t beautiful, not like Senna who was pitch-black grace, two pinpricks of light in the easy, swift-moving dark; she was a Dingle wolf, practically feral, with the practicality of a well-used blade, and sharp teeth. She was who you’d turn to to get something done.

Mihal paced up to Senna; nose-to-nose, the two of them blinking back and forth.

(Sometimes, after the gunshot, when Robert used to think about how he might die, he had thought about this. Cain, looming over him, and that big grey wolf with her teeth in Senna’s throat.

But that wasn’t what this was.)

“We’re glad you’re here for them,” Cain said. His hair was the same iron-grey of his wolf, and they had the same unrelenting stare. The kind of stare you wouldn’t want to meet late at night, and alone.

“Always,” Robert said.

Mihal dipped her head, and Senna dipped hers back. Neither of them spoke, but it was the way of predators. The look was enough.

Once, not so long ago, Cain tied them up and threw them in the boot of his car. This was different. This was about Aaron: there was nothing more important than that.

They would do anything for Aaron. It was strange to think that, to know it: they had been so used to the world that was the two of them, against everything. But it was true, and they would, and Cain and his wolf could see it.

It was what they were, too: Cain and Chas and Baruch and Mihal. If Aaron had asked they would all have been bloody, and it was only by the force of him that they were not.

Mihal nodded to Robert, and Senna to Cain; and then the man and the wolf turned and went, down along the dark streets of the village. The moonlight shone on their shoulders.

Robert had never been much for dogs but he thought perhaps he understood a little better, now.

Senna blinked, luminous, and pressed herself against his side. She was warm, and soft, and he was so glad to have her. The idea of being alone was too much to bear.

-

Senna twines around Aaron’s ankles, like she’s a housecat. She’s been doing it more and more since Aaron and Beatrice collapsed on them in the scrapyard, since Robert and Senna gave up the ghost and admitted they were in love.

They hadn’t ever been so afraid, the two of them, with Aaron in that little house; Aaron, terrified and so fucking ill that Beatrice was only blinking glassy eyes and coughing. They hadn’t wanted anyone to touch them. Robert and Senna had stayed very still, and listened, and tried not to talk about the blood that they could shed if Aaron would only ask it of them.

They would never forget it, as long as they lived. They had looked at Aaron and Beatrice and seen an ending, close up and touchable, and it had terrified them. They would do anything to keep Aaron here. Anything.

Since then, Senna’s been tactile: with Robert, of course, sprawling across his lap and pressing herself to his side, but with Aaron, too, twining about his ankles and reminding him she’s around, she’s there, she loves him. Half apology for all the times she pretended like he didn’t exist - like all the things they yelled in the scrapyard, that time before Robert got shot - half reassurance, a promise that nobody would leave Aaron alone now, not as long as he didn’t want them to.

It’s undignified but it makes Aaron smile, and not a lot of things do that, lately. Senna likes it, being around him. She likes the way his heart beats, the rhythm of it. And the smell of him, and the colour of his eyes.

There’s a lot they like about Aaron. A lot they love.

Look: they can even say that, these days. In a pinch.

Chas looks over at them but she doesn’t say anything. Robert’s glad: he doesn’t want to bite Aaron’s mum’s head off. It’s not exactly protocol for your daemon to touch someone who isn’t your lover, but Aaron needs it, and Robert’s spent enough of his life hurting Aaron. He can do the decent thing. Anything to make Aaron hurt even a little less.

Aaron drops his hand and rubs her behind the ears. With his other hand he tips his pint glass back.

Beatrice blinks her small eyes at them. She’s curled up in the middle of Baruch’s big paws, one of them on her belly; Robert isn’t the only one worried about Aaron right now, staying close.

Senna purrs, very low, very soft.

“Get your cat on a leash,” Aaron teases. “I’m gonna break my neck, one of these days.”

Senna yawns, and rests her jaw on his thigh.

“Doubt it,” Robert says.

“Yeah,” Aaron says. “She’s sharp, she is. Dunno where she gets it from.” He rubs at Senna’s belly and she puts her paws up, stretching out, for better access.

“Excuse you,” Robert says, easily. “We’re the same person.”

“Well,” Aaron says. “She’s definitely the brains of your operation.”

Robert throws a chip at him.

Aaron laughs, loud and bright.

It’s nice, this. Normal, almost. Good.

-

“Aaron- wait.”

Aaron paused. In the darkness Robert could barely make out the shape of Beatrice on his shoulder.

“I still see you like that. I always will.” The air was cool in Robert’s chest, on Senna’s fur. His mouth hurt, and his stomach, and none of that mattered because stuck in his memory was the image of Aaron, walking away. “I want you,” he said. “A lot. But in the middle of all this - it wouldn’t be fair on you.”

At his side Senna paced, taut with longing, miserable with it. But they were in love. They had been in love before but this felt different, huger, more real than it had ever felt before.

He dropped his hand to her shoulder and held on.

There was no universe, no possible world in which they would not want Aaron. There was no possible version of Aaron that Robert would see and not love, not  _ want. _

But there were Aarons that were smarter and better and brighter, Robert thought. Aarons that would walk away, and be better for it.

This Aaron’s eyes tracked Robert’s fingers, a flash in the night. His daemon’s face was pressed against his throat, a curled up miserable ball; his arm crossed over his chest, to keep her there.

“Shouldn’t I be the one to decide that?”

This time it was Senna who spoke, taking a half-step forward before his hand stilled her. “We’re trying not to mess things up here. We want things to be different this time. We’ll wait for you, until you’re ready.”

Beatrice leaned down. “Then what?”

“Then we give it a proper chance. If you still want us.”

Aaron looked away, into his daemon’s small dim eyes, and then back to them. His gaze was steady and calm: the sort of calm that came before a storm, before the end of the world. “I will do. Of course I want this.”

There was a piercing cry: a raccoon, padding through the woods, and the girl from before.

And then Robert got kicked in the balls and Senna and Aaron and Beatrice were all wincing for him, but that was the mood, gone.

They walked to the car and he settled his hand in his daemon’s fur again. Aaron went round to start the car.

Beatrice clambered onto the roof of the car and looked down at them. “Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

She licked her paw and then she said, “You’re better than you used to be, you know.”

-

“Look at you, smitten kitten,” Victoria says, beaming at Senna. “You’re practically purring every time he so much as looks at you. Has he dangled a ball of string for you, yet?”

Senna flicks her tail at Samson disdainfully but holds still to let him clamber up onto her back, anyway. Yesterday she did actually bat at a dangling thread on Aaron’s sweater and he laughed about it, the great big length of her tripping over her own paws.

Robert had felt warm inside, all the way through.

There’s snow in Robert’s eyelashes and he misses the warmth of Aaron at his side.

“Maybe there’s hope for the two of yous yet,” Victoria says.

Senna stretches out her long paws. Samson wraps his arms around her neck; patiently, she yawns.

He looks back at her. “Maybe there is.”

-

Senna says, “We’re doing the right thing, aren’t we?”

He buttons up his shirt, checks the line of his jacket in the mirror.  _ Still got it. _ “Yeah,” he says. “We love them.”

Senna’s fur gleams. “And that’s enough?”

Robert breathes in, breathes out. “It better be,” he says.

  
  
  



End file.
